As the use of personal computers has been more ubiquitous in all phases of professional and personal life, and with the increasing popularity of graphical user interfaces for both personal computers and workstations, the need for sophisticated methods of communication between a peripheral and a host system has become more fundamental to the successful operation of the overall system. The variety of available peripherals has expanded dramatically with the increasing power available from the microprocessors available for such systems, but peripherals such as keyboards, mice, trackballs, touchpads, gamepads, joysticks, remote-controllers, and so on are well-known for use with host systems of many types, including PC's, workstations and other types of microprocessor-controlled devices including video game systems, or other office or household devices. To operate in conventional environments, each of these peripherals is connected to its host system via a hardware port. In addition, in conventional systems, the peripherals communications with the host through a substantially proprietary protocol.
While such communications protocols between conventional host systems and peripherals have been very successful at bringing substantial power and flexibility to the user, they do suffer from some limitations. Among others, most host systems have only a limited number of available ports, and cannot share such ports for substantially simultaneous operation with a number of peripherals. This imposes significant limitations on the flexibility with which the system can be used. For example, if only two serial ports are available, only two serial peripherals can be simultaneously connected to the host system. Similarly, and particularly applicable to interactive devices such as modern video games or teaching environments, it has been difficult to permit multiples of players to communicate with a host system in a substantially simultaneous manner without providing a separate communications channel for each such device.
Devices which communicate with their host systems without hard-wired connections are also well known in the art. Infrared remote control devices for use with modern home electronics such as a television, VCR or stereo are readily available in the marketplace. However, such devices have little computational power, and basically use relatively simple protocols to communicate to a host which of several buttons have been depressed by the user of the remote device. The oft-criticized IBM PC Jr implemented a wireless keyboard using infrared techniques, but suffered because the infrared link needed to be pointed almost precisely at the associated receiver on the host to maintain communications. This proved to be difficult to achieve, leading to abandonment of the design. In general, infrared devices can operate only if they are pointed substantially in the direction of the receiver, which is usually at or near the host system.
More recently, other wireless devices have been introduced. One well-known device is the Logitech MOUSEMAN CORDLESS, which uses an RF communications link. In addition, various other infrared and RF devices by various other manufacturers are known in the art. However, while these devices have been very effective at providing communication between a single peripheral and an associated host, they have not provided the broader solution necessary to connect multiple types of devices to the host, nor have they permitted concurrent connection of multiple devices to the host.
There has therefore been a need for a method and apparatus capable of permitting multiple peripheral devices to communicate with a host system in a substantially simultaneous manner.